


I'd Rather Have a Cat

by LLN3dseestheLight



Series: I'd Rather Have A Cat [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Adoption, Experiment Dustin Henderson, Gen, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLN3dseestheLight/pseuds/LLN3dseestheLight
Summary: How Claudia Henderson would have rather gotten a cat and ended up with a Dustin.
Relationships: Claudia Henderson & Dustin Henderson
Series: I'd Rather Have A Cat [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745104
Kudos: 7





	I'd Rather Have a Cat

**Author's Note:**

> "Dream On: By Aerosmith-1973”  
> Every time I look in the mirror. All these lines on my face getting clearer.  
> The past is gone. It went by like dusk to dawn. Isn't that the way? Everybody's got their dues in life to pay. Yeah, I know nobody knows…  
> Where it comes and where it goes, I know it's everybody's sin. You got to lose to know. How to win. Half my life's in books' written pages, Live and learn from fools and from sages.

**An undisclosed location**

**1973**

_“Go to the playroom, there is something you should see.”_

God damn it, Claudia Henderson thought, as she looked through the plexus-glass window at the brightly painted walls of the children’s playroom on the other side.

In the middle of the floor, building a tower made of blocks, was a brown-eyed boy, wearing a pair of blue overalls and a red long-sleeved shirt. He couldn’t have been any older than about three with a mass of long curly brown hair. He was building a tower with building blocks of every color in the rainbow, and every time the tower fell? The toddler didn’t cry like most would or laugh like others, no. This boy’s eyes narrowed, his jaw set, and he picked up a block and began again.

_“He’s not like, the others, but he’s different than a normal child.”_

Claudia watched as the boy made the base of the tower wider this time and tapered the tower as he built the mast up. She had never given much thought to Dr. Benner’s failed experiments. The children never showed any signs of powers until they were between three and five years old. After that, they were removed from the nursery and given a tattoo, then the tests began.

“ _The boy has_ Cleidocranial dysplasia,”

The boy was a darling little thing, smart to from the way he figured out how quickly to get his tower to stay up. Claudia didn’t know why David wanted her to see this boy. She saw nothing in him that was any different from any other child she had ever seen. Claudia startled when a pair of muscular arms, covered in a green and black camouflage uniform jacket, circled her waist causing her to jump slightly, as a deep voice tickled her ear,

“He’s a cutie, Dia.”

Claudia looked over her shoulder at the man. His vibrant auburn colored hair was cut in a short military fashion, his bright blue eyes gazed lovingly at her. Claudia never understood why such a handsome, charming, smart man wanted her. Claudia knew she was no beauty queen, she cared more for science than her looks, not that she was ugly, but Claudia knew that she was plain with her blonde hair, that was a few shades too dark to be fashionable and unremarkable pale green eyes, she was also boarding on just this side of plump.

“What do you think?” He whispered in her ear.

Claudia frowned. David couldn’t seriously be… “I think I’d rather have a cat, David,” her husband laughed softly in her ear.

She didn’t understand what was so funny? She knew David wanted children, but because of the experiments, Claudia had taken part in when she was younger it was no longer an option for her to have them herself, even if she had wanted them. Which Claudia wasn’t sure she did, she was an astrophysicist for heaven’s sake!

“Dr. Owens wants us to take him. Just in case he starts showing signs.” David said.

There was a possibility that this boy could start to show signs of abilities later, though because of the boy’s genetic disease, it was unlikely to happen. But it was smart to give the child to someone in the project that could watch for the signs of developing abilities.

“David…” Claudia started, she didn’t—

“I want him, Claudia,” David said flatly. “We need some normalcy in our lives. Raising this boy would give us that.”

Claudia wanted to disagree. She tried to say her life was normal, at least it was for her. She had come on to Project M-Ultra as a teenager. Dr. Benner had promised her safety from her abusive father, a college education, a better life all around for her participation in the experiments. After she got her degree, Dr. Benner offered her a job working for him and his projects after coming to the conclusion that she was one of the failures and lost the ability to have children of her own. David knew this and said it didn’t matter to him. But that had been four years ago when they had first started dating. Claudia should have realized once they got married, David’s feelings about having children would change.

_“If we can’t find someone to take him? He will have to be disposed of.”_

“If we do this,” Claudia said, her husband perking up at her words, “and I’m not saying I do. This will change our lives forever, one way or another.” She warned him. Because if the boy did display any sort of abilities, Dr, Benner was going to want the boy back and Claudia knew her husband well. David was going to get attached to the boy to the point that he wouldn’t return the boy if it because evident that the boy had the sort of abilities Dr. Benner or that Sam Owens was looking to create in these children.

David tightened his arms around Claudia, “You won’t regret this, darlin’,” his soft, Southern Tennessee accent, slipping out like it did when the man got emotional on her. Eventual, he let Claudia go and stepped away from her, “I’ll go talk to Dr. Owens about adopting the boy.”

David turned and started to walk away, but Claudia called his name, and he stopped, looking over his shoulder at her as she asked, “What is the boy’s name?” Because the experiments were given names until they have shown they had abilities. It was only after that. That they were referred to by numbers. As a way to distance those that had raised the children until then. Claudia asked David what the boy’s name was because it would have been the first thing David would have found out about the child.

“His name is Dustin,” David told her, then continued on his way.

Claudia turned back to the glass, the boy now stood in front of a replica of what looked to be Big Ben, if the English clock tower had been made of colorful bricks instead of drab gray stone. She watched one of the caretakers walk up to the boy and praise the boy on his work. “Dustin,” she murmured, getting a feel for the name. It was a good one, “Dusty, Dust Bunny…”

Yes, she could do this, being a mother couldn't be that hard. Everyone had one, no woman would be one if it were hard. Science was hard. Caring for a child was natural, or so Claudia had heard. With children, all you had to do was love them, right?

_“If he becomes what we need, though we have given him to you to keep safe, at the end of the day, the experiment belongs to me, remember that. Have I made myself clear, Colonel Henderson?”_

_“Yes, sir, Dr. Benner.” David Henderson said._


End file.
